1900s Archives - Page 90 of 133

Buckminster House, Portsmouth, NH

August 7, 2015August 4, 2015 by Derek Strahan

The Buckminster House, at the corner of Bridge and Islington Streets in Portsmouth, around 1907. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The house in 2015:

It’s a little strange for a nearly 300-year-old house to be named after someone who lived in it for just two years, but this 1720 Georgian home is named for Revered Joseph Buckminster, the pastor of Portsmouth’s North Church from 1779 until his death in 1812. When he moved in here in 1810, the house was already almost 100 years old; it had been built in 1720 by Daniel Warner, and later went through a series of owners before being purchased by Colonel Eliphalet Ladd in 1792.

Ladd died in 1806, and in 1810 his widow married Reverend Buckminster, thus giving the house its ultimate name. It was later used as a boarding house, and sometime by the mid 19th century was the subject of an early form of historic preservation. According to Rambles About Portsmouth, published in 1859, the then-current owner George Thomson “has shown excellent taste in carefully preserving its original exterior appearance.” Thomson’s efforts seem to have paid off, because the 1907 photo shows a beautifully restored house that still continues to be well-preserved to this day, with minimal exterior changes.

Congress Street, Portsmouth, NH

August 4, 2015 by Derek Strahan

Looking east on Congress Street from Middle Street, around 1905-1915. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Congress Street in 2015:

This view faces down Congress Street toward Market Square, where the photos in this post and this post were taken. Unlike those views, however, there have actually been some changes here. When the first photo was taken, this area was on the edge of the Market Square commercial district, so the scene shows a mix of both brick commercial buildings and wood-frame houses. The houses on the right-hand side date to the mid-1700s, when Portsmouth was the colonial capital of New Hampshire and a major seaport and shipbuilding center.

On the far right is the corner of the Cutter House, which was built around 1750 and subsequently owned by Dr. Ammi R. Cutter, a surgeon in the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. He later gave the house to his daughter, who married Clement Storer, who was also a doctor and military officer. He served in the War of 1812, and also served one term in the House of Representatives and two years as a U.S. Senator. In his 1817 trip to New England, President James Monroe stayed at the house; at the time, Storer was a Senator and a fellow Democratic-Republican.

Beyond the Cutter House is the Leavitt House, which was built prior to 1761 and was the home of Wyseman Clagett, a colonial judge who was infamous for his draconian rulings. It later went through a series of other owners, and by the mid 1800s was owned by a Miss M. Leavitt, from whom we get the historic name of the house. The third house down the street, barely visible beyond the Leavitt House, was the home of Colonel Joshua Peirce, a New Hampshire militia officer who purchased it in 1839. It had been built around 1785, making it by far the newest of these three mansions.

Today, all three of these historic houses are gone, having long ago been replaced with 20th century commercial blocks. Another 18th century house was demolished not long before the first photo was taken; it had been owned by W.H.Y. Hackett, a lawyer, banker, and politician who lived here for over 50 years. After his death in 1878, the YMCA used the building until 1905, when they demolished it to build the present-day yellow brick building on the same spot. This is the only building in the foreground that still exists today, and even then it has been altered. The bay windows on the second floor have been removed, and the storefront has been heavily altered. The YMCA used this building until 1957, and today the first floor storefront is home to the Sake Japanese Restaurant.

Market Square, Portsmouth, NH

August 4, 2015 by Derek Strahan

Looking northeast in Market Square in Portsmouth, facing Market Street, around 1902. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Market Square in 2015:

These views show part of Portsmouth’s historic Market Square, which as the photos suggest hasn’t changed much in well over a century. In fact, it would require going back nearly 200 years, before the invention of photography, to notice much of a difference here. The area around Market Square has been the commercial center of Portsmouth since the 1700s, when the seaport town was rapidly growing as a major port and shipbuilding center. Its heyday came in the early 1800s, with many historic buildings surviving from this time period, including much of this scene here.

Portsmouth was hit with several disastrous fires in the early 1800s, including one in 1802 that destroyed most of Market Square. The area was soon rebuilt with brick commercial blocks, many of which survive today, including the Portsmouth Athenaeum building on the far left. The distinctive building was completed in 1805 as the home offices of the New Hampshire Fire & Marine Insurance Company, but the company went bankrupt just eight years later because of the effect that the War of 1812 had on the New England shipping industry. The Athenaeum, a private library and museum, purchased the building in 1823, and it has been there ever since as one of the few remaining private membership libraries in the country.

Today, Portsmouth is no longer a major shipping center, and hasn’t been for a long time. With the Industrial Revolution of the early 1800s, much of New Hampshire’s industry moved from shipping to manufacturing, and the inland mill towns became the state’s centers of economic activity. By 1900, the population of Concord and Nashua was five and ten times larger, respectively, than it had been in 1830. In Manchester, the increase was even more dramatic, growing from 877 people in 1830 to over 56,000 in 1900. Meanwhile in Portsmouth, the population had grown by just 32%, with virtually no population change at all between 1850 and 1890. However, little population change also meant little development projects, which is part of the reason why the Portsmouth of today has so many historic early 1800s buildings, including virtually the entire scene here. By my count there are 14 buildings in the first photo, and all 14 still exist today, which is exceedingly rare to find in a 113 year old street view of the commercial center of a city. The only building that doesn’t appear in the 2015 scene is the one on the far right, at the corner of Pleasant and Daniel Streets. It is still there, but I couldn’t fit it in the frame of my camera.

West on Merrimack Street, Lowell, Mass

July 29, 2015 by Derek Strahan

The view looking west on Merrimack Street from Kearney Square, around 1908. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Merrimack Street in 2015:

These views show the same section of Merrimack Street as the ones in this post, just from the opposite direction. This area has long been the commercial center of the city, and it saw significant development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since then, however, there haven’t been many major changes, so this stretch of Merrimack Street is lined on both sides with a number of historic buildings, including three prominent ones that appear in both of these photos: the Colonial Building (1906) on the far left, the Wyman’s Exchange (c.1880) just beyond it, and the massive Hildreth Building (1882) on the opposite side of the street.

The Colonial Building is one of the newest buildings in this scene, and in the 1908 photo it looks like the finishing touches aren’t complete yet, because the storefront windows are still covered in paper. It was built on the site of Barristers’ Hall, a church-turned-lawyer’s office that had been built in 1843 and burned down in 1905. The owner, Joseph L. Chalifoux, was a clothing merchant who rebuilt the site and leased the new building to Nelson’s, a five and ten cent store that was probably in the process of opening when the first photo was taken. Since then, the building was expanded in 1929, and has continued to house retail space and commercial offices, enjoying a prominent location on the corner of Merrimack and Central Streets.

On the other side of Central Street is Wyman’s Exchange, which replaced an earlier building of the same name that was built in the 1830s. Over the years, a number of businesses have used the storefronts along the Central and Merrimack Street sides, with the upper floor being used for professional offices such as lawyers, doctors, and dentists. The one major change that has occurred since the first photo was taken was the addition of a fifth and sixth floor atop the original building. The upper floors match the rest of the building, and it was probably done soon aftert he first photo was taken. Today, aside from being taller by 50 percent, the building retains much of its historic appearance.

The Hildreth Building was built in several stages between 1882 and 1884, beginning with the part closest to the camera. One of the building’s first tenants was S & H Knox and Company, a five-and-dime store that was still operating out of the building on the left-hand side when the 1908 photo was taken. Within a few years, the owner of the company would merge with his cousins’ stores to form F.W. Woolworth. The storefront on the other side was the home of King’s, a clothing company that asks prospective customers “Why not give us a try?” in a sign over one of the windows. In 1908, the east side of the building featured a large advertisement for Uneeda Biscuit, made by the National Biscuit Company. The biscuits are no longer made today, but the company has since shortened their name to Nabisco, and they still use a variation of the logo seen on the sign.

East on Merrimack Street, Lowell, Mass

July 29, 2015 by Derek Strahan

Merrimack Street in Lowell, looking east from the corner of Kirk Street around 1908. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Merrimack Street in 2015:

The city of Lowell was once one of the major manufacturing centers in the country, and for much of the 19th century it was the state’s second largest city. This section of Merrimack Street became the commercial center of the prosperous city, but by the mid 20th century most of the factories had closed, the population declined, and there wasn’t much economic development in the downtown area. From a historical preservation perspective, this actually worked out, because today’s Merrimack Street includes a number of historic late 19th century commercial buildings that may have otherwise been demolished and redeveloped. The city has since undergone a revitalization, thanks in part to the creation of the Lowell National Historical Park and the growth of UMass Lowell.

Among the many historic buildings that survive from the original photo, probably the most prominent is the Bon Marche Building, the large yellow brick building on the left. It actually consists of two 19th century buildings, with the section on the far right having been built around 1874. The much larger section was built in 1892, and was the home of the Bon Marche department store. In 1927, the department store expanded, with a matching addition on the left-hand side that gave the building a little more symmetry. The addition replaced the much smaller brick building that had the large “Bon Marche” sign on the front in the 1908 photo. The Bon Marche closed in 1976, and the space was used by the Jordan Marsh department store until it too closed in the 1990s. Today, the building is home to the UMass Lowell Bookstore and several other businesses, but there is at least one reminder left from its past – the faded paint of the white sign on the top of the 1927 addition, which reads “The Bon Marche.”

Other historic buildings include the 1846 Welles Block, visible on the far left. (The 2015 photo was taken from a little further back, so more of the building can be seen in it than in the 1908 photo.) In the distance at the center of the photo is the Runels Building, also known as the Fairburn Building. It was built around 1892 for retail and office space, and in 2004 the upper floors were renovated and converted into condominium units. On the right-hand side of the street, probably the most obvious surviving building is the 1893 Middlesex Safe Deposit and Trust Company Building, another one of many commercial buildings on Merrimack Street that was built in the 1890s. The building, with its distinctive oval window on the side, is at the corner of Merrimack and Palmer Streets, and over the years has been used as a bank and as a fur company. Today, the exterior of the building is well-preserved, and the retail space on the ground floor is a bakery.

City Hall, Lowell, Mass

July 28, 2015 by Derek Strahan

Lowell City Hall, photographed around 1908. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

City Hall in 2015:

There aren’t many centrally-planned cities in New England. Most grew over time out of 17th century Puritan settlements, but the city of Lowell was different. Planned from the start as an industrial center, Lowell was one of the leading manufacturing cities in the country for much of the 19th century, and toward the close of the century its prosperity led to the construction of a new city hall. It was dedicated in 1893, and represents the Romanesque style of architecture that was common in late 19th century America, especially in government buildings and churches. At the time, the city was the third largest in the state, after Boston and Worcester, with an economy based largely on the textile industry.

The city reached its peak of prosperity soon after the first photo was taken, but by the 1920s the factories began to close as industries relocated to other parts of the country. Today, there isn’t much manufacturing left in the city, but the population has rebounded to pre-World War I levels, with many of the former factories being redeveloped and reused for housing and commercial space. City Hall is still in use, and is relatively unchanged from over a century ago. It forms the centerpiece of the City Hall Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, and it is just a few blocks away from the Lowell National Historical Park, where many of the historic factory buildings have been preserved as museums.